A great way to build your brand is to offer a signature system/methodology or flagship system.
This is a system/ process that you have used in the past to get results and is something others can use to also get results in business or life.
A signature system can be packaged into a step-by-step program that you then teach other people. You end up with a great piece of content that can lead to multiple streams of income.
Contents
- What Is a Signature System?
- Why Build a Signature System?
- Who Needs Your Signature System And How To Get Them To See It?
- Monitor and Improve
- Signature System vs Course – What’s the difference?
- Transform Your Skills and Knowledge Into Profitable Coaching, Consulting or Training Business
- 4 Benefits of a Signature System
- How Your Signature System Fits in Your Marketing Funnel and Coaching Business
- How To Create Multiple Income Streams With Your Signature System
What Is a Signature System?
A signature system is a system that you have used to get results in business or life. It can be packaged into a step-by-step program that you then teach other people. A signature program can serve as an “information product” that generates revenue from multiple streams of income.
You present this information product in different ways: through home study courses, seminars, conferences, and coaching programs. At each point in the process you add value by delivering more content and building on the experiences of your audience members.
It may also be built up of multiple smaller or sub courses. So let’s say you have 5 courses around a key subject such as digital marketing, then if you group these courses together the whole 5 courses could be a complete methodology aka signature system to get the best results from point A to point B in solving a problem in your potential niche.
A signature system is a system you’ve used in the past to solve a challenge you faced. It’s something you’ve succeeded at doing and can teach others’ to do as well. It could be in any niche, but what’s important is that it’s something you can break up into steps and teach.
For example, you’ve successfully launched a coaching and consulting service. How did you do it? You set up a website, drove traffic to it, sought out clients on forums and social media, and so on. You can take each of these steps and explain how you did it so that others can replicate your results.
A signature system delivered as a signature program is a great way to boost your brand, grow your business, gain exposure, and potentially earn multiple streams of income.
Why Build a Signature System?
There are several reasons subject matter experts or businesses choose to create a signature system. The program you offer showcases your expertise. As your customers use your program to achieve the same results you did, this builds your reputation as an expert. Even those who don’t take the course will see you this way and hence have a chance to become a big name in your industry/niche.
Your system will become synonymous with your brand. You’ll have this one specific tool that’s wildly successful, and this will not only boost your brand among your audience but also help you reach new audiences who can benefit from your expertise. People like structure, if they can see a method or process to help them get results it creates trust in the market place.
Once you have your first system in place, you can expand into other areas.
You can create other systems to meet the needs of your market or offer other products and content that’s related. But it always best to get one system working and earning you income than creating multiple systems all in one go. Having a specific focus will help you get faster results.
Branding with Your Signature System
In order to help with your branding, your signature system has to be good. It needs to provide unique value to your audience and achieve the expected results. You should spend time building a system that’s guaranteed to get its users results. You’ll also learn how to improve it through user feedback. The idea is to have a proven system which can then be used in the market to get results. Get you from point A to point B in the fastest and efficient path. It becomes a roadmap/path/framework which helps others too.
Signature systems tend to be consistent with your current business.
However, a signature system can also help you change your brand, or start a completely new business. For example, if you’re a health and wellness expert but you want to publish a program on building blogs, you can rebrand yourself as an expert on online publishing, or start a new business dedicated to that new topic (as long as you have a process or method that works and is proven).
How to Build a Signature System
I have found that the best way to discover a signature system is to identify an interesting observation about the world, create a simple mental model, then test it. The mental model can be based on either your own experience or just something you’ve heard. The key is that if you have a simple model, you can use it to predict what will happen in new situations where you don’t have any experience.
Think of the instructions for the mental model as your first “step.” Then once you’ve done it enough times, you start seeing patterns in these basic steps and abstract them out to make your second step. You keep doing this over and over again until there are enough steps that other people could follow them to get their own results.
Do this with things like marketing, building teams, raising money, etc. I like to see if I can come up with an interesting observation about how to get better results in that area, then create a simple model of how it works and start testing it out.
Identify Your Signature System.
Start by identifying something you know how to do well. Look at your own skills and knowledge and see where you can add the most value to others. If you look at something you have achieved analyse how you did it step-by-step. Map out these steps and plan how you’ll teach each one to your audience.
Find YourAudience/Market.
Someone can benefit from your program. It’s just a matter of discovering who. It may be your current audience or a segment of your audience. On the other hand, it could be a totally new audience. The people who can benefit most from your system are those who are suffering from the problem it solves.
Before you can deliver your program, you need to know its audience. Look for people who are facing the problem your system solves. If you’re selling a course on starting an online business, you need to target people who are struggling with where to start. For an easy fitness routine, you should target people who want to lose weight but are overwhelmed by options or too busy.
Once you know your audience, you can discover what kind of content they like, how they learn, and what they’re looking for. You can then tailor your program to these preferences.
Create Your Program’s Materials.
Decide on the right format for your audience. In addition to the main program, which might be an eBook or a video course, decide what other materials you’ll need. Give your students work to do as they go through the program.
Choose Marketing Tactics.
Choose marketing tactics that allow you to reach your audience and tell them about your program. Be sure to emphasise its unique benefits. Decide what role the program will play in your sales funnel.
Implement and Follow Up.
Once you release your program, keep in contact with its participants. Follow up with them to make sure they received the expected results and get feedback so you can make improvements.
Want to learn how to do it step-by-step? Take a look at my very own signature system which can help you build out your coaching, consulting or training business online. The course teaches you everything you need to know to set up your own unique signature system and teach it to others. Click here to find out more. Or Feel free to get in touch and have a conversation about your business. Click here
Who Needs Your Signature System And How To Get Them To See It?
You have a great signature system that you know gets guaranteed results. But how do you get it to the people who need it? The key is to choose marketing methods that are effective in reaching your target market.
Explore Marketing Tactics
There are many different ways to tell people about your program. You can reach them through social media, a dedicated blog, YouTube videos, or any other online marketing strategies.
Knowing your audience, pick a small handful of marketing channels that are most likely to reach them (if you can focus on one to begin with). You can add more or change course once you publish the program, but start by choosing a few tactics you think are best.
Think in terms of a funnel where your program is at the center. You need traffic strategies at the opening of your funnel to draw people in so they’ll find your program. Some commonly used methods for doing this include offering a free report as a lead magnet, email marketing, or participating in social media groups relevant to your product.
Monitor and Improve
Once you launch your system, pay close attention to see what works and what doesn’t. Set conversion goals and see if you’re hitting them. Follow up with participants and get feedback on what they liked or didn’t like, and make any necessary changes.
You may find that you’re using the wrong tactics or emphasizing the wrong benefits in your offer, or that one step in your program is incomplete or difficult, or even that you’re targeting the wrong audience. Improve your program based on this feedback and your program will become more effective and valuable.
Do you want to start building your signature system today? I’m offering a full course that teaches you the A to Z of signature systems, including how to create your own, how to find your market, how to get it to your market, and ways to improve it. Click Here
Signature System vs Course – What’s the difference?
Let’s talk about what a signatures system is vs a course. What it is and how a signature system compares to an online course for example.
A signature system is a methodology that you have created using your knowledge, skills or expertise that solves a problem for a specific audience or niche. The methodology is usually created either because you overcame a challenge and then figured out that you could teach it to others to help them with their problems or you’ve been doing something over time and have the expertise to pass on or teach others to get measurable results.
It could be in any niche and it’s something you can break up into processes and steps which you can share with or teach others.
For example, I’ve been in the web and digital marketing space for over 15 years. Over this timeframe I’ve systemised the more effective path a coach, consultant or trainer can take in other to transform their skills and know lowed into an online business. I call this the Digital SIMAC Method.
It’s a process whereby I can show you how I can help subject matter experts to also then package their knowledge grow the coaching, consulting or training business only. You set up a website, drove traffic to it, sought out clients on forums and social media, built an email list so on. You can take each of these steps and explain how you did it so that others can replicate your results.
The methodology is more than a course its a pathway and has several elements (12 in this case which make up the whole process)
The signatures system covers the following
- Strategy stage: Niche / Signature System / Business / Networking
- Implementation Stage : Brand / Sales Funnels / Websites / Live events
- Marketing Stage: Content / Traffic/ Tracking / Media
- Accesses and calibrate
You could say there are 12 courses but all of them together make up the signatures systems but is a proven process to help you get the end results. The Digital SMIAC Method is an end to end online business solution which shows how all aspects fit together in the overall business.
A Signature System Is like Your Course on Steroids with a lot more other elements involved like
- 1:2:1 calls
- Mastermind Calls
- Q&A Sessions
- Mindset elements
- Group coaching
- Support team
If you tool one of the modules from the Digital SMIAC Method such as “sales funnel” you could say that in itself is a course.
A course is therefore specific whereas a signatures system is a complete pathway.
A signature system has elements that make it uniquely your own. One of the steps is not a signature system. A Signature System is a Process that works and that gets results this then means because you have something that works you can now serve more clients by turning what you do into a signature system.
Your signature system can be an additional revenue stream with passive and active elements.
It’s perfect for subject matter experts like Coaches, Consultants, Entrepreneurs, Mentors, Speakers, Authors, Facilitators, Teachers and Trainers. It’s not for beginners as it wouldn’t help or teach you to become a coach. But it’s more for people with skills and knowledge but don’t know how to transform or package what they know so it can be used to serve others.
Online courses are brilliant for learners/students to learn something very specific. If you are a beginner, new or not sure how to proceed you could create a course that teaches one specific thing. How to meditate for example. Then as you share this course with people you may discover that they also need to know what food to eat. So you create a course on nutrition. Then you realise that the exercise element is missing so you create a course around exercise. Notice what’s just happened you now have 3 courses. On their own, they are just a course to do specific things. But if you put them together you know have a transformational methodology.
But if you want to create an experience or transformation or process that’s where your signature system comes in.
A signature system when delivered as a signature program is a fantastic way to boost your brand gain exposure, grow your authority and business which then potentially gives you the ability to earn multiple streams of income.
The content on this page is a mini-training on signature systems. (If you have skills, expertise or you’d like to work with me over the next 12 weeks to get your signature system mapped out and ready to go, feel free to get in touch)
Transform Your Skills and Knowledge Into Profitable Coaching, Consulting or Training Business
A great way to leverage your expertise and build your business is to create a signature system and a program for teaching it to your customers.
A signature system is a method for solving a problem your audience faces. It’s a method you’ve used in the past to solve this problem which you can teach to others so they can achieve the same results.
This system can earn you income directly, but it can also be used for branding, gaining exposure, building a marketing funnel, and setting up multiple streams of income.
The biggest perk of your signature system is that anyone can do it. All you need to do is figure out what you can teach and how you can teach it.
There are five key steps to creating your own unique signature system and putting it into a program to teach your audience.
1 – Identify and Design Your System
Your signature system is something you’ve used in the past that’s worked for you. This could be:
- How you grew your blog readership from a handful to thousands in just two months
- The short daily exercise routine that keeps you in shape and helps you maintain your weight headache-free
- A simple formula for managing household cleaning that makes it painless
- Your organized system for studying languages that helped you become fluent in Spanish and Chinese in the last year
- Your writing system that allows you to publish a novel of genre fiction every six months
You may have seen systems like this offered by big-name online entrepreneurs that guarantee you’ll be making millions by this time next year.
However, everyone has a system they can teach. Signature systems are most often offered by entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches, consultants, small business owners and service-based businesses. But in reality, anyone can turn their experience and knowledge into a teachable system.
Start by looking at some area of your business or your life where you’ve solved a problem and seen results. Work your way backwards to see how you did it. You should be able to identify the specific steps you took. Is this something you can teach to others so they can get similar results?
If it’s hard to think of anything offhand, try asking others. Talk to people you’ve helped, such as customers and clients. Ask them directly or see what they’re saying about you on social media. They can give you some ideas you haven’t considered.
It’s important to choose just one system to start with. Choose the best or easiest to understand at first. Once your first program is up and running, you can always create new systems in the future for more income and exposure.
It’s likely that you have such a system, but you’ve never thought of it in this way before. You’ll need to go through each step and decide how you can teach others how to do it. You’ll also have to provide whatever resources or background information others will need to know.
2 – Define Your System’s Uniqueness
The true value of your system is that it’s unique. Others have solved this problem in a similar way, but no one’s system is quite the same as yours, because you came up with yours on your own.
Do you know what makes your process different from others? Discovering your system’s uniqueness is an important step and it will be crucial in marketing a program that teaches it.
One way to do this is to look at your competition. Search online and find similar systems, and then see if you can glean what sets yours apart. Search relevant keywords in Google and on Amazon, where many businesses sell programs such as these.
Pay especially close attention to the benefits these products offer. Somewhere in their marketing materials, they’ll mention the specific benefits of their program. You don’t need to use the product to find these. Identify the unique benefits your system offers that theirs don’t. These are the unique benefits you can use in your marketing.
Next Steps:
- Find similar systems that solve the same problem as yours.
- Look at the benefits each system offers and compare with your own to discover your unique benefits.
3 – Identify Target Markets for Your System
If you have a good system that gets results, someone else can use it to get the same results as you. The challenge here is to find out exactly who those people are so you can focus your marketing efforts on them.
You may already have an audience that you market to. This market isn’t necessarily the right one for your new system. You may need to reach out to a new audience, or you may find that your system is right for a particular segment of your market.
If your system is well suited to your current market, this will make it easier to sell. Your existing customers already know and trust you. If you’ve been doing your marketing well, they’re ready to buy from you.
What if you have to look for other markets? This will involve some extra work on your part, but it will expose you to a new audience. This gives you an opportunity to start a whole new business.
The key in choosing a market is to consider pain points. You’re looking for people who are suffering from the problem your program solves.
Once you choose an audience, you may find yourself tailoring your system to meet their specific needs. For example, you might have a system for building high-engagement blogs that you’ve used for your marketing funnel in your business. You might choose to tailor it to people who are just getting started with their online business presence, like you were when you set up your first blog.
As you start creating your system and researching your market, you might find that these newbies struggle especially with using social media to help build blog readership. Because of this discovery, you might change your system to tailor it specifically to building blog traffic and engagement with social media.
Next Steps:
- Would your system benefit your current market or a subset of your current market?
- Who is facing the problem your system solves?
- Identify the target market for your signature system.
- Could you change your system in any way to better serve your market?
4 – Craft an Enticing Title
Naming your signature system is extremely important. It needs to be consistent with your brand or the new brand you hope to create, and it needs to tell people exactly what your system will do for them.
The title should be memorable and drive home the benefits the customer will receive. Remember that this is what people will hear first, and they’ll decide whether they check out your offer to learn more or not. The title needs to be exciting and motivating. It should be as specific as possible, but also quick and snappy.
In addition to the title of your program, the title for each step is also important. When you tell people what’s in your program, you can list these steps by title, and this will further motivate people and tell them what benefits they can expect.
Brainstorm several different titles and give each some consideration. Make a big list and narrow it down. Ask other people to help you figure out which is the best. Often, another person will have a different perspective as an outsider who didn’t create the system.
Next Steps:
- Create a list of titles that explain the benefits of your course.
- Narrow down your list until you have the best title.
- Create titles for your steps that you can use for marketing.
5 – Package and Sell Your System
You might have an excellent system in place, but it’s not going to generate multiple streams of income unless you know how to package and sell it.
For this step, you’ll turn your system into a teachable program. The system is what you used to get success; the program is the container you put your system in so that others can use it and get the same results.
Your first signature system should be a medium-priced product. It’ll be in the middle of your funnel, between lower-priced or free content (like short reports or blog posts) and higher-priced items (like personal coaching).
A signature program can take any one of many different formats:
An eBook with worksheets
A physical book
An online course
A course delivered by email
A series of videos
Webinars
Group coaching programs
In-person workshops
Study your target market and determine the best format for them to digest your information (text, video, webinar, etc.) and the best delivery system (one-on-one, group-based, self-study, a mix, etc.).
This should also depend on the nature of the material you’re teaching. If you’re showing someone how to set up websites, you might offer video tutorials where they can see what you’re doing, and tech help with a live representative if they run into trouble.
On the other hand, if you’re offering a language learning course, you might deliver classes through a webinar system, with self-study materials and group meetings for students to practice speaking.
You also need to decide how long the course will take and how much you’ll offer in terms of materials. Keep in mind that the more materials you offer and more in-depth you get, the more you can afford to charge for your program.
Support materials are especially important. As students work their way through the course, they’ll undoubtedly need some kind of help. These supplemental materials can include anything from checklists, resource guides, and workbooks, to live online support and quizzes.
Finally, you’ll need to determine what marketing channels you’ll use to reach your audience. If you’ve defined your target market well, this shouldn’t be hard at all. You should already know where they hang out online and what kinds of content they like.
Next Steps:
- What format and delivery system will you use to offer your signature program?
- What marketing channels will you use? (Remember to emphasize benefits in all your marketing materials)
Next Steps
I hope this guide has got your head buzzing with great ideas for your signature system. If you’re ready to get started, I’m offering a full course that teaches you how to create and perfect your signature system and create a program for teaching it to others. You’ll find everything you need to know in the course, and by the end, you’ll be building multiple streams of income by sharing your expertise with your audience.
4 Benefits of a Signature System
After setting up your signature system, you still need to be there for your customers to offer support and gather feedback. They’ll need your help and you’ll need to know whether they’re getting results or not and, if not, why. Making improvements to your system using this feedback is how you perfect it and make it a success.
1. Help Your Students Get Un-Stuck
When you create a signature system, you write it in a way your target audience can easily understand. But it’s inevitable that people will still get stuck somewhere along the way. You should be there to help them get un-stuck. Give your students a way to contact you or a member of your team, and reply ASAP with the answers they need.
You may find that many users are getting stuck at the same point in your program. One step might be slowing everybody down. This means that you need to make some changes there, such as adding more information to clarify.
You might need to provide resources to your customers to help them work through the system and achieve the desired results. For example, you’re teaching people how to produce videos for YouTube. Rather than going into choosing editing software in the course, you might provide a list of free, easy-to-use editing programs.
2. Tech Help for the Technically Challenged
There’s a good chance that your program will be enjoyed by people of many different demographics, and some may be less tech-savvy than others. A tech task that’s second-nature for you could be a stumbling block for some of your customers and even prevent them from getting through the program.
Keep this in mind when planning your steps and write them as if your participant has zero technical knowledge. Give them the basics of what they need to know and provide additional resources if necessary.
3. Building Support into Your Signature Program
Even if you tell your customers that you’re there for them whenever they need you, they still might be hesitant to reach out to you. It’s good to build your support into the course itself. If you check in with them regularly throughout the course, they may ask you things they otherwise wouldn’t.
There are many ways to do this. You can have a conference call at the end of each step or at certain points along the way. Your program can include group sessions where students work together with or without a “teacher” as moderator. You can include quizzes, tasks for reporting progress, or regular Q&A times.
4. The Follow-up Is All-Important
It’s crucial that you follow up with your participants after they’ve completed the program. The point is to make sure it worked for them and they got the results they wanted. If the program teaches them something where the results appear in the long-term, schedule regular follow-ups in the coming weeks or months. Make sure you ask them for a testimonial that you can use in your marketing.
If your participants didn’t get the results they hoped for, you need to find out why. This will give you invaluable feedback to help improve your course for future customers.
How Your Signature System Fits in Your Marketing Funnel and Coaching Business
Your signature system plays an important part in your marketing funnel. A system works best when it’s at the core of the funnel. It’s the main draw that gets people to first follow you, and can then lead to further purchases down the line.
The Entry Point: Your Lead Magnet
First, you need something to bring people into your sales funnel. You can promote your signature program online and some people will find you through this marketing. But you can ramp up your marketing efforts by offering free content first to build your audience, and then pitching your program to them once they know and trust you for valuable information.
The best way to do this is to offer a lead magnet. This is a free information product that people can download. The lead magnet offers helpful tips and establishes your expertise. It also mentions your program and the benefits it offers.
You can also offer an email list. This works well in combination with a lead magnet, which is an enticement for people to sign up for your list. Through the tips you offer in your emails, you further build a relationship with your audience, and you can then pitch your program.
Keep in mind that your entry point content can be anything you put online that can draw traffic, including blog posts, YouTube videos, and interactions on social media. Just make sure this content is relevant to your program.
The Middle: Your Signature Program
Your signature program is the centerpiece of your sales funnel. This system, which you’ve discovered and used successfully yourself, enables your audience to see the greatest benefits in their business or life.
You can put other offers at other price points here in your sales funnel, as well as different content types and formats. If done effectively, you can learn quite a bit about your audience’s preferences by seeing which offers they take.
The End: Your High Ticket Offers
Your signature program can be used to lead your customers to a higher-priced item at the end of your sales funnel. After receiving the help they need through your signature system, your customers are ready to see what else you have to offer. You may also be offering a higher level, deep-dive version of your signature system that includes personal interaction with you, which some customers will wish to pay more for.
Many service-based businesses use a program like this to sell their services. Through the program, the customer comes to see you as a reliable expert.
The key to creating a good system is to find an area where you’ve achieved success and results, and analyze how you did it. Break this process down into steps that you can teach to someone else.
Want to learn how to do this?
Sign up here for my online course on building your own signature system.
How To Create Multiple Income Streams With Your Signature System
A unique signature system is a great way to earn multiple streams of income. Using your expertise, you can teach your audience how to solve specific problems and this can lead to further profits. Here are four ways you can spin your signature system out into multiple streams of income.
1 – Enlarge or Diminish
Take one step or a few steps of your signature system and expand it to create a new system. Or, turn your system into one step of a larger system that teaches something more complex and involved. This is a great way to leverage your content and repurpose.
For example, you’re offering a program on writing and publishing books quickly. It teaches how to turn out a novel every four months. Take one step, which describes how to self-publish, and create a whole new program that teaches your self-publishing system.
Another example would be turning your system on how to grow a blog’s readership into one step of a program that teaches how to launch an online business.
2 – Upsell or Cross-Sell
Tell people who take your program about other products or services that you offer. Find something relevant that your participants can use. This is a great way to drive sales for a higher-ticket item or promote a related service. Your signature program establishes you as an expert, and then your audience comes to you for the various kinds of help they need.
If you’re offering a program that teaches a simple daily fitness program for busy working people, you might offer participants fitness products to help them with their workout routine, general healthcare products, or your online coaching service.
3 – Bundle Products and Offer More Value
Put your signature system together with other relevant content. The content could be something like resources, worksheets, information products, a video course, coaching sessions, and so on. Adding content to your program increases its value for your customers.
If you’re teaching your time management system to solo entrepreneurs, you could offer time-planning charts or templates, a timer app you developed, or a report on different time management strategies. Offer any one of these extras, any combination, or all of them for even more value.
4 – Create Your Next System
Many businesses build multiple streams of income by offering a variety of signature programs. These different programs are all related to the same core topic. They could focus on different problems that your target market faces, or reach out to new markets. To make this as effective as possible, gather feedback from your audience on other programs they’d like to see you offer.
For example, in addition to offering a system for decluttering your house, you might offer a program specifically for decluttering an office, or a program that teaches your weekly no-headache cleaning routine. You may also offer signature systems for interior decorating, fixing common household problems, or simple living.
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